


Rosa Centifolia

by WoollyLambda



Series: WoollyLambda's P&P Fics [1]
Category: Barbie - All Media Types, Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper (2004)
Genre: Character Study, Erika (Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper) Character Study, Floriography, Gen, Language of Flowers, Minor Character Death, this fic is mobile-friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 22:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18787906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WoollyLambda/pseuds/WoollyLambda
Summary: The hundred-petaled rose.Erika preferred her mother’s name for it.





	Rosa Centifolia

When she was younger, Erika’s mother had planted a rosebush in the yard behind their tenement. Every morning, she would wake at dawn to fetch water from the well and fertilizer from the chicken coops, and then haul it all back to the house to tend the garden with.

At first, the process seemed bleak. The earth in the yard had been cracked and dry since before Erika was born, and hadn’t been able to keep much more than yellow grass limping along in that time. But, the more she tended to it, the more the rosebush thrived. As her mother worked it, the soil turned from the dull gray of infertility to a beautiful deep-brown. It was loamy and rich with life, and the rosebush rooted itself deeply—putting out new shoots every day.

Erika sprouted up with it, and as she grew, her mother taught her how to work the plant.

The buds, when dried, could be done up in a tea for when Father couldn’t bring home fruit. The hips, boiled into syrup after they were touched by the first winter frosts. Fresh, soft greens from the bush could be mixed with chicory and fiddleheads in salads, and when cuttings from the branches grew new roots, they could be fermented and eaten, too.

And so, instead of cabbage, they had cabbage rose.

The flower itself didn’t take to the name with much trouble. Densely packed with dusky-blue petals as it was, the resemblance was easy to see to anyone who gave it even a passing glance.

Erika had been too young, back then, to understand why her mother tried so hard to get the roses to grow. Hadn’t understood why they couldn’t have normal cabbage in the first place.

‘Well, you’re not quite normal, are you, dear?’ her father would say—sending her a wry smile.

She’d pretend to be mad about it and huff around the room—because there was only one room—until one of her parents scooped her up and the other tickled a smile back onto her face.

If that didn’t work, they would sing to her in the most beautiful voices. They were the best singers in the whole world! Or, her whole world, at least.

In reality, the reason they kept the cabbage rose was because the mine was quickly drying up, and every day her father was bringing back less and less in wages.

Mother tried to pick up the slack by selling tinctures to the people who lived in the tenements packed in beside them, and it worked for a while, because there weren’t any families living there who could afford to see a real physician. But, after a while, Father got sick, and Mother’s home remedies weren’t enough to keep it at bay.

Erika made the syrups like Mother had taught her, and Father put on a brave face for his little girl, but eventually it all became too much. He was coughing all the time. Couldn’t sleep without Mother crushing poppy seeds into his porridge, and even then, he needed to be propped up with pillows, and watched all through the night.

Her mother told her it was to make sure he didn’t have bad dreams. And why wouldn’t she believe her mother?

When the sickness finally took him, Erika cried for days. She choked on the air, drowning herself in sobs until her tears ran out.

Her mother went shortly after. It was sudden. Unprepared for. Neither one thought to tell Erika about their debt to Madame Carp.

She didn’t like to think about her time there, now that she was free.

How her fingers had bled into so many dresses those first few months that the debt had doubled.

How she had to beg and steal for food, only to have that taken from her, too.

The one thing that she had been allowed to keep—the one thing that was hers and hers alone—was a cutting of the cabbage rose.

She planted it on a trellis underneath her balcony, and Madame Carp found it unoffensive enough to not tear it down once it started growing, so she tended it and cared for it until it climbed the trellis all the way up to the second floor.  
When she finally, blissfully, was free from Madame Carp, she took another cutting of the cabbage rose and gave it to Anneliese to thank her, and that’s when Julian told her it’s proper name.

“In the language of flowers,” he’d recited—eyes closed, and one hand on his puffed-out chest—, “rosa centifolia stands as the ambassador of love. Blue specimens like this one are extremely rare, and as such are representative of mystery, and often symbolize secret or forbidden love.”

“So, if I’m hearing this correctly,” Erika had begun in a mischievous tone, “the blue rose represents… forbidden love with an ambassador?”  


Anneliese’s hand had shot up to cover her mouth as she chuckled, and her face went red with pent-up laughter when she saw Julian’s confused expression. Dominick was trying his best to hide his own laughter, but, like Anneliese, seeing Julian’s face made it worse.

After a long moment of badly-hidden snickering, Julian snapped and demanded they all explain what was so funny.

“If you’ll remember, when I arrived in your Kingdom, I came disguised as an ambassador?” Dominick provided. A kind smile broadened into a grin across his face as Julian’s expression brightened.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “That’s… actually quite clever.”

“Well, I thought so, at least,” Erika replied.

On her tour, she sent Anneliese letters, and for every one she sent, she got a reply.

Sometimes they were short and sweet ‘hello-goodbye’ kinds of affairs, and other times, if they hadn’t been able to talk for a while, the letters were stuffed into envelopes so tightly that the pages did’t fit back inside when she finished reading them.

She loved to hear from Anneliese, of course, but her favourite part of opening the letters was that tucked inside each one, without fail, was a petal from the cabbage rose.

_To remind you of home._

**Author's Note:**

> thank you bb for beta reading :)))) [fiddles my sweet son](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Fiddles)
> 
> Chickory: dandelion greens  
> Fiddleheads: the curled heads of freshly-sprouted ferns
> 
> Both very tasty! And historically consumed by dirt-poor people, fun fact


End file.
